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Hey Guys!

After following Nathan William’s blog at www.blackrain79.com for a long time and running into him in a random bar in Chiang Mai (my new home), I decided to start a blog myself so I can share a little bit about my poker life and also try and help other players get better at this beautiful game of ours.

I’m from Germany and I got into poker around 10 years ago (watching the 2005 WSOP Main Event is what got me). I was just playing for fun for the first 5 years or so and wasn’t taking it too seriously. I was basically a huge nit and just played premium hands without any positional awareness. I C-bet virtually any flop and gave up if I was called or played back at. I actually think I was playing a winning style because everybody was playing so terribly around that time. I did have absolutely horrible bankroll management though. I would have like 200$ in my account and go play NL25 6-max. I would play solid and slowly build my roll and then have a standard downswing of 4 or 5 buy-ins (half my bankroll!) in a bad session. This would just flip me off and I would go on complete monkey tilt and spew the rest off at higher stakes.

Then I stumbled upon a book that made me realize just how much I had too learn in this game. It was like someone switched on the light and suddenly a lot of things started to make sense for me (you can raise K9 from the button? WTF?). I dropped down to NL2 and just grinded my way up through the limits with at least 30 buy-ins for each level.

After finishing my business studies I thought, why not give poker a try and head to Thailand for while? I was a winning player at NL25 at the time and I had been to Thailand a number of times and absolutely loved it there. Plus I knew that you can basically live there for as little as $500 (although I would say you need around $800 to live comfortably).

So I sold my stuff back home, bought a one-way ticket and I haven’t regretted that decision for a second. Right now I’m playing a mix of NL50 and NL100 at Stars and iPoker (6-max cash almost exclusively). It’s frustrating at times for sure and playing for a living can be an extremely stressful endeavor. But at the end of the day I’m playing a game for a living that I still enjoy very much and I can do it all on my own terms.

I’ll be using this blog to tell you guys about life here in Thailand and I’ll try to post some strategy on a regular basis to help you improve your games. Poker is a ridiculously complex game but with enough study and practice I feel that almost everyone can become a good player and make a decent amount of money.

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8 comments

Hi Kieran nice story you have,Keep going!
my girlfriend she’s also live in Germany (Humburg)
by the way half Thai-Swedish living in Thailand (born here)
So Sawasdeekrub 🙂

I play poker since i was a Kid but just for fun and play for fun some times

But last 3 month I begin to take a shot at poker i though that i have an edge but reality is not,sure 2 or 3 day straight i earn and then i lost 1 day whole bankroll playing higher stake it’s been like this or similar all the time,but three month I’ve playe I know a lot more now,and i’m reading Blackrain79 micro NLHM book,I’m also playing 6-max Cash game

now I’m grinding 5nl hope to play at 100nl soon (don’t know how soon)
I want to ask you a question

1.do you multi-table much and how many a time (now i’m comfortable with 4 tables)

2.My biggest problem is when I down 2-3 Buy’ins,I’m moving up stake or very tilt not playing the best game and I know it’s biggest leak of poker
but I don’t want to stop playing sure i take a break 4-5 hour then I play again
maybe lose maybe even maybe got some, I want to ask you what do you do when you lost what stop loss do you use or any thing that you do when you lost much.

3.what is it like normal winning player like you,did you win the session straight many days or it’s mix losing session and win session but likely win session.

1. I’m not a big multi-tabler. I usually play 4 tables and never more than 6. I’ve tried to force myself to play more tables in the past but I tend to rush things and generally don’t play well when there’s too much stuff going on at once.

Playing fewer tables allows you to think much more deeply about your decisions. That’s why I don’t recommend anyone that is still learning how to beat the micros to play more than 6 tables at once. I know you won’t make any money 4-tabling NL5 but your only job right now is to improve, so forget about the money and focus on your decisions at the table.

2. Understanding variance is essential to controlling tilt and keeping a level head. I know you won’t like my answer but losing 3 buy-ins in a session is absolutely standard. Having a stop-loss is a great thing and I did that for a long time (I would stop playing after losing 5 buy-ins). Pretty much everyone out there plays worse when they are losing money, so definitely take breaks when you feel like your game is declining.

A great thing about playing the micros is you don’t have to worry about finding good games. You can literally quit at any time and know you will find good games when you feel better. I can’t tell you how hard it is to walk away from a good game at NL100. It is really hard to find a good game so when you do you wanna keep playing until it breaks up.

3. Most of the time I expect there to be more winning sessions than losing ones of course (or else I’d have a problem). That doesn’t mean that I’m always winning though. I can’t even count the amount of 10 buy-in downswings I’ve had. You will face 20 buy-in downswings on a regular basis and even lose 30 in a row from time to time (those are the soul-crushing ones that will make you want to quit poker forever).

1. On the contrary, the time difference is actually very beneficial. These days the majority of good players come from Europe (with plenty of exceptions of course). I usually play all my sessions in the morning when it’s night in Europe. So all of the good players there are either sleeping or playing through the night which puts them at a disadvantage. So it’s actually a lot easier to find good games here.

One drawback is the availability of some games. I’m not really playing much on iPoker these days because the games have dried up a lot. On Stars you can always find games though.

2. My bare minimum is 30.000 hands. I’m not a big multi-tabler (4–6 tables max) so that number will be very low for a lot of pros. I don’t really care though. I make enough money to live in Thailand and this way I enjoy playing a lot more.